Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.

At the end of the day, one of the biggest misconceptions of Ghost is that it's just about the devil. It's always been about mankind and living.

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

One life is worth the universe. Poe was able to go right into the very depth of life and to demonstrate this.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

What, if as said, man is a bubble.

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

By his intellect, [man] is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

I guess what I always found funny was the human condition.

We're all human; we all have weaknesses.

At the end of the day, we came into the world naked, and that's the way we're going to go.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

Mankind is a dream of a shadow.

Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

I consist of a little body and a soul.

Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support. Life and death are connected by vulnerability. The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives. Let's not forget the preciousness and vulnerability of life during the times we are powerful, successful, and popular.

Human existence basically is──a never to be completed imperfect tense.

If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.